Apple's new £4bn headquarters is building that firm’s late founder Steve Jobs tipped to be best office in world

With its vast scale, Apple’s new £4bn headquarters is the building that the firm’s late founder Steve Jobs tipped to be the best office in the world.

And it would seem no detail was too small.

The company has patented a special pizza box for the canteen so its employees do not have to suffer a soggy bottom. The white plastic box has eight holes in the top and small ridges to keep the base of the pizza away from the bottom of the box.

The idea is that the holes are just big enough to let steam out, but small enough to retain heat, enabling 12,000 employees to bring pizza back to their desk from the 4,000-seat cafe without worrying they will find a sloppy mess.

The box patent was filed in 2010, suggesting the company was waiting for Apple Park’s opening to reveal its design.

It is just one of the fascinating details to have emerged in an article by technology magazine Wired which itemises some of the astounding figures behind the giant office.

The 2.8m square foot office in Cupertino, about 50 miles from San Francisco, was one of the last projects overseen by Jobs before his death in 2011. The 175-acre campus will contain 9,000 trees and a 100,000 square foot fitness centre complete with two-storey yoga room.

The cafe is fronted by two four-storey glass doors weighing 440,000lb each. Employees can walk the full 1,300 yards around the perimeter of the building on a walkway, and product launches will find a new home in the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre.

The building has been designed by acclaimed British architect Norman Foster, who also designed the Gherkin in London, and has been eight years in the making, with the first people moving in last month.

In keeping with the company’s passion for clean, minimalist designs, the pipework will all be hidden from view, while brushed aluminium, as featured on the company’s MacBook computers, can be found on fittings around the building.

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And in the case of an earthquake, the building is able to move 4.5ft in any direction without losing vital services.

To stay within the enormous £4bn price tag, two-thirds of the 9,000 parking spaces are above ground instead of underground.

But cost concerns did not stop the team of architects, which grew to 250 at one point, consulting experts who optimise airflow in Formula One racing cars to advise on how to make the building ‘breathe’ via special vents and chimneys.

It will run solely on sustainable energy, most of it from the 805,000 square feet of solar panels on the campus.

But the building has its critics, with American commentators saying it is old-fashioned and questioning why there is no childcare centre.

Scott Wyatt, an architect at international design firm NBBJ, told Wired: ‘It’s a spectacular piece of formal design, but it’s contrarian to what’s going on in corporate headquarters across the tech industry.’

Chipmaker Qualcomm is suing Apple suppliers for refusing to pay royalties, which it says has been done at the iPhone maker’s request.

The tech firm alleges the manufacturers have been pressured by Apple not to pay royalties for technology it says it owns.

It has dragged FIH Mobile, Hon Hai Precision Industry, Pegatron Corp, Wistron Corp and Compal Electronics into the row over the value of Qualcomm’s intellectual property.